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Opinion, commentary and analysis on everything that makes the U.S. housing economy tick -- not to mention the ghosts in the machine, too. Written by HW's team of editors and reporters each business day.

Sarah Wheeler joined HousingWire in November 2013 as Content Editor, serving Housing Wire magazine and HW.com. Sarah brings extensive experience in both newspaper journalism and marketing.

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Bradley Inman, founder and publisher of INMAN News, topped the list of the latest Swanepoel Power 200, which contains a subcategory titled the 10 most powerful real estate media executives for 2013. The list is named after analyst Stefan Swanepoel, who created the inaugural rankings.

Inman is followed by Steve Murray, founder and editor of Real TRENDS, and John Featherston, founder and publisher of RISMedia.

Paul Jackson, HousingWire's founder and CEO, was named the fourth most powerful real estate media executive. Stacey Moncrieff, managing editor at REALTOR Magazine, rounds out the top five.

The list names the 200 most powerful people in residential real estate in 2013, then breaks them down into subcategories.

Richard Smith, chairman and CEO of Realogy Corp., was ranked as the most powerful person in residential real estate overall, followed by Ronald Peltier, chairman and CEO of HomeServices, Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow (Z), Gary Keller, co-founder and chairman of Keller Williams Realty International, and Dave Liniger, co-founder and chairman of RE/MAX.

The list, published by Stefan Swanepoel, author of the annual Swanepoel Trends Report, is the result of benchmarks and algorithms that factor in a host of considerations, including an individual’s influence and tenure in the industry, the office they hold, the financial resources of their company and their contribution to the industry.

Jackson, who has published more than 3,500 articles, began covering the mortgage banking industry in 2006, and was one of the first to cover the mortgage crisis. He took HousingWire from a blog to a media company in 2008, which today includes HousingWire.com and HousingWire Magazine, both winners of numerous awards for editorial excellence. The HousingWire editorial team, as a whole, has published tens of thousands of unique pieces of content.

HousingWire’s focus on the entire mortgage banking industry and the financial markets as they relate to housing provides a distinctive viewpoint.

"We are unique because we connect real estate to the markets that fund it," Jackson said. "Across the rest of the real estate media space the focus is mostly on real estate itself." That unique focus led Jackson to launch HW 30 last August, an equity index designed to capture the essence of publicly traded firms that represent what could be called the “housing economy” in the U.S.

The list spans multiple sectors including lending, servicing, investing and real estate operations, and provides insight into the state of this vital part of the U.S. economy.

The rest of the top 10 media executives list features Benn and Lani Rosales, founders and editors of AGBeat, Heino Molls, founder and publisher of REM, Stuart Elliot, editor in chief of The Real Deal, Lockhart Steele, founder and blogger of curbed.com, and Matt Carter, managing editor at INMAN News.

This Month in HousingWireMagazine

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